Lower Elk Creek Falls in Two Shots
Northwest Return Travelog #4
Elk Creek, ID - Fri, 30 Jul 2021. 12:05pm.
Once we arrived at the lower falls on Elk Creek (see previous blog) we stayed for a while. For one, it was hot out- temperatures registered near 100° F (37.5° C) when we started- and we'd need to rest up before climbing back up out of the canyon. Two, it was stinkin' beautiful there so we were in no rush to move along.
In this blog I'm sharing a pair of pictures of nearly the same scene. The difference between them is how I captured each shot.
In a blog I posted a few weeks ago from Bassi Falls in California I explained how shooting picture with long exposure times make water look like silk curtains. The pictures here show Lower Elk Creek Falls with and without- or as they say in Philly when you order a cheesesteak, "Wid, or wid'out?"- slow exposure.
The pic above is a typical stop-action type picture taken on a sunny day. The camera's shutter fired at 1/1,250 sec. The imaging sensor captured light for just 0.0008 seconds.
The pic below shows the same scene captured at 0.2222 sec. That's nearly 300x longer.
As promised, the flowing water looks like a silk curtain instead of, well, splashing waterfall.
"But if the camera captured 300x more light why isn't everything blown-out white?" you might ask. Ah, that's where the neutral density filter comes in!
I wrote about that piece of kit in the Bassi Falls blog. I carried the filter again here, too, knowing that I'd be shooting pictures of waterfalls in broad daylight. This daylight was almost too broad, though. I dialed the filter up to its maximum setting to capture the second picture at reasonable aperture. That makes me glad I spent the extra coin on that high quality variable filter. With a cheaper filter I'd either have had too much light to contend with or an orange-ish color cast. As it is here, the orange color all comes from the natural vegetation on the hillside and the effect of the wildfire smoke in the sky.
One piece of kit I didn't bring on this hike is my tripod. It's sitting in the car. I chose not to lug it around for the length and strenuousness of this hike. I partly regret that because it meant I had to hand-hold the camera during these long exposure shots, increasing the risk of camera shake that would blur the pictures. To compensate I braced the camera against a wooden fence post. Most of the pics turned out well though one or two went into the digital trash.
Keep reading: more waterfalls ahead!
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/94015.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]
Elk Creek, ID - Fri, 30 Jul 2021. 12:05pm.
Once we arrived at the lower falls on Elk Creek (see previous blog) we stayed for a while. For one, it was hot out- temperatures registered near 100° F (37.5° C) when we started- and we'd need to rest up before climbing back up out of the canyon. Two, it was stinkin' beautiful there so we were in no rush to move along.
In this blog I'm sharing a pair of pictures of nearly the same scene. The difference between them is how I captured each shot.
In a blog I posted a few weeks ago from Bassi Falls in California I explained how shooting picture with long exposure times make water look like silk curtains. The pictures here show Lower Elk Creek Falls with and without- or as they say in Philly when you order a cheesesteak, "Wid, or wid'out?"- slow exposure.
The pic above is a typical stop-action type picture taken on a sunny day. The camera's shutter fired at 1/1,250 sec. The imaging sensor captured light for just 0.0008 seconds.
The pic below shows the same scene captured at 0.2222 sec. That's nearly 300x longer.
As promised, the flowing water looks like a silk curtain instead of, well, splashing waterfall.
"But if the camera captured 300x more light why isn't everything blown-out white?" you might ask. Ah, that's where the neutral density filter comes in!
I wrote about that piece of kit in the Bassi Falls blog. I carried the filter again here, too, knowing that I'd be shooting pictures of waterfalls in broad daylight. This daylight was almost too broad, though. I dialed the filter up to its maximum setting to capture the second picture at reasonable aperture. That makes me glad I spent the extra coin on that high quality variable filter. With a cheaper filter I'd either have had too much light to contend with or an orange-ish color cast. As it is here, the orange color all comes from the natural vegetation on the hillside and the effect of the wildfire smoke in the sky.
One piece of kit I didn't bring on this hike is my tripod. It's sitting in the car. I chose not to lug it around for the length and strenuousness of this hike. I partly regret that because it meant I had to hand-hold the camera during these long exposure shots, increasing the risk of camera shake that would blur the pictures. To compensate I braced the camera against a wooden fence post. Most of the pics turned out well though one or two went into the digital trash.
Keep reading: more waterfalls ahead!
[This entry was cross-posted from https://canyonwalker.dreamwidth.org/94015.html. Please comment there using OpenID. That's where most of the action is!]